Picnic in the Park

A bunch of communities around Sarah's house host Picnic in the Park during the summer.  We went last year and attended for the first time this summer just last week!  The city hosts the picnic, bringing in food from Qdoba and Garlic Jim's Pizza.  Who doesn't love a free dinner in the park!?  There is also a bounce house, face painting, different community sponsored booths (library, parks and rec), and fire trucks and police vehicles.  There is also a community band that plays some get-up-and-dance type music....so much fun!

 

 

Book Club

The girls are participating in a kids book club this summer for the second summer in a row.  A friend of mine does a great job organizing themes and crafts and snacks to go along with the books the kids read.  We meet every other Monday and there is a theme of what kind of book the kids should choose to read for the week.  The first meeting was Animals....Erika read a book called Barry the Bravest St. Bernard, a non-fiction book about a group of dogs in Switzerland who were trained to help people navigate the Alps.  Laurel read the Ittsy Bittsy Spider.  At book club, the kids (we had 17 the first meeting!) each share what their book as about and what their favorite parts were.  Laurel is one of the younger ones so most all the other kids can read.  It is a great way to stay on top of our summer reading!

 

The craft to go along with the Animals theme was to make animals out of different sized marshmallows.

VBS

Summer vacation kicked off with Vacation Bible School last week!  The kids always have a really fun time and I loved doing my craft project this year (sandal making)!  They look forward to it all year, and then are confused the rest of the summer why there is no VBS whenever we go to church.  This year, Erika invited her good friend, Gracen, to attend with her.  She loved having a friend her age participate with her!

 

 

 

Father's Day Fishing

Matt took us fishing over Father's Day weekend.  He found a really fun area called St. Louis Ponds that is about 30 minutes from our house.  It is a series of little ponds that is perfect for our little fishermen!  The kids get pretty bored after about 10 minutes so part of our fishing spot requirements is a nice place for them to run and play and grab sticks and explore new areas safely and this place fits the bill!  There were tons of little fish in the pond the day we went and they would bite the kids bait, so it was fun for them to actually see their bopper go under water and get to reel in their lines! 

 

Ready for a fun day of fishing!

Snack time happened almost as soon as we got there.  They get bored and hungry!

Matt caught a couple tiny little fish, which was all the kids thought was pretty cool!  They just wanted to touch a fish....wish granted!

We had a nice picnic once the fishing was over!

 

And now, fishing through the years:

2011 

2012

2013

End of 1st Grade

The last week of school was a lot of fun activities for Erika!  We started on Wednesday afternoon with a family barbeque lunch.

 

Erika with some friends at lunch.

Erika and her two teachers...Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Thorsell

Spending some time on the playground with her after lunch.

Laurel and Levi got to come to school to watch Erika participate in field day.

 

After lunch, the kids spent a couple hours playing different water-based games in the baseball fields.  It was hot, but they had a great time!

So hot!  But they ended the day with popsicles.

 

On Thursday, it was Erika's last day of 1st grade.  It was an overcast and sometimes rainy day, but we still celebrated and welcomed summer!

Last day of 1st grade

 

First day of 1st grade

These two were so excited to pick up Erika for the last time!

Welcome to summer!

The kids with the Crater Cougar

This is how our family feels about it being summer!

 

Erika got to chose dinner and she chose to go to Taco Bell.

 

Then we finished off the celebration day with some ice cream.  And now we are officially in summer mode!

Slip and Slide

"It's a lot of fun to play when the sprinklers all the way!"

Erika received a slip and slide for her birthday and we were able to break it out this past weekend.  The kids need a few more tries to get the "sliding" part down.  Matt and I even showed them how it was done!  And I have the bruises and sore body to prove it.  Throwing a 34-year-old body onto the ground voluntarily is much different than I remember doing when I was 10!  Anyway, we had a really fun time and ended the day with an ice cream cone...perfect!

 

 

 

Salesmanship

Who can resist an ice cold glass of tropical punch Kool-Aid served by these adorable children?

The kids held a cupcake and Kool-Aid stand last weekend.  I seriously love any adult who buys drinks from neighborhood stands....and spend way too much money!  We had almost all of our neighbors and lots of passersby give the kids "tips" after buying their drinks and they made $14.50 in just three hours of work!

 

Making the sign the night before.  They colored the letters that I blocked for them.

Laurel and Levi started working at the stand before Erika got done with school.

Pretty soon just sitting there was boring so we got some books to read while we waited for customers.

And then there was some dancing.

When Erika got back from school, Laurel and Levi were hot and they went inside and she sat out at the stand.

Soon, her friend, Gracen, came over and sat with her for a while.  While she wore broken, funny-looking sunglasses!

 

After a long day at the Kool-Aid stand, the kids wanted to spend the night in the pop-up camper.  They were so excited!  Levi only lasted 15 minutes before he wanted to come inside and sleep in his own bed.

But the girls loved it!